


Snow Red is Pretty Straightforward

by Royalrastafariannaynays



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dave is Snow White, I'm having way too much fun, Karkat is the Prince, M/M, Snow White Elements, Urban Fantasy, essentially a crack AU with some fun satire, now with the full author's note, the exiles plus casey and nakkodile are the dwarves lmao, well the exiles and ms paint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-20 00:11:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5985781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Royalrastafariannaynays/pseuds/Royalrastafariannaynays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave practices with swords in the woods, the local housewives get antsy over his hot bod (so does his high school crush), and one day a wicked lady just DECIDES to kill him. For funsies. </p><p>There's also some clowns and rapping with crows in there, a lake, a dark and light queen, some short persons, a crone, an apple, a cliff, and a dress. Not necessarily in that order. </p><p>There's also a badly-timed kiss with a True Love. Like THAT'S a realistic concept.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow Red is Pretty Straightforward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sburbanite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sburbanite/gifts), [Errorcode254](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Errorcode254/gifts).



“The Late Queen, God rest her soul, ended up dripping some blood onto the snow and out he popped!”

“What? No way.”

“Yeah, she dripped some blood onto the snow of all things, and then ended up giving birth to some really pale kid.”

Dave picks up an apple in his left hand, and puts it in the grocery bag. Eavesdropping is a terrible habit, but he has a bit of an issue with it. He picks up a bunch of bananas and continues listening, pretending to inspect the fruit. 

“You gotta be kidding me.” 

“Well, the official press that year said something about skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony. Goddamn flowery journalists.”

“I thought we were talking about the stranger in the woods? How did we get to talking about the queen, God rest her soul, who died more than twenty years ago?”

Oh. So they’re talking about Dave. The ebony hair thing’s new. Dave runs a hand over his white locks, and puts the bananas back. The farmer’s market is always an interesting place to find gossip and see what’s going on in this small-ass town. Usually there are rumors about the “handsome hermit prince who lives in the woods” and Dave is under no illusions that he’s not handsome. In fact, he’s a fucking treasure, a regular George Clooney of albinos everywhere. 

Yeah, he’s got to constantly slather too much sunscreen on every time he so much as thinks about leaving his front door, but he sure does know he’s handsome.

Of course, most of the rumors probably stem from small town mentality, him not wearing his fucking shades when he’s working out in the woods, and having a tendency to work out shirtless. He also tends to wear hats when he goes out. It’s actually kind of shocking that no one recognizes him out there. The women in this town love to gossip, and coincidentally, they also love to hike. The rest is as follows: woman from town goes hiking, hoping to see handsome stranger. Woman sees handsome stranger from a distance. Woman does not wander closer, not wanting to make the ‘stranger’ aware of her presence. Woman goes home and immediately posts about sighting on facebook. 

“Serves me right for not going into town enough,” Dave mutters to himself. He goes by the potatoes and adds three pounds of those and three onions to his bag. Roasted potatoes sounds good for dinner. With the sausage in the freezer, maybe? The rest of the conversation between the two people near the fruit is ignored, and Dave pays for his groceries.

It’s funny how the people in the town hear about him and automatically assume some kind of royalty. Yeah, he’s maybe distantly related to a monarch, but who isn’t? He never even knew his mom, anyway. And maybe he wasn’t allowed to leave the house until he was six. Maybe the ‘Queen’ (a moniker used by local townsfolk to describe an heiress to apparently some very old and very big fortune and the leading competitor to the Betty Crocker line, who had mysteriously disappeared and whose fortune was absorbed) had died the year Dave was born.

So what though? Dave likes to entertain the narrow possibilities sometimes. It’d be fucking killer to be a prince. No more shitty job. 

It takes only about ten minutes to reach the house on the edge of town where Dave lives with his brother, Dirk. Meulin is visiting today, it seems. She commissioned a mechanized cat feeder with six bowls. For her six cats. Three sphinx, two lynx-point Siamese, one ragdoll. Dave has heard the spiel countless times. She likes to visit, to check up on the progress. It’s good that Dave got enough food to feed three, in case the crazy cat lady decides to stay. 

Home life isn’t amazing but it’s not awful. If Dirk’s boss visited less often, or if he worked at a lab instead of home, maybe Dave wouldn’t be subjected to her tri-weekly bullshit. Dave’s working as a sign-twirler for an insurance company, and his boss is pretty nice and pays him double what the other guys get because Dave does a good job. He still hates that fucking job. 

He wouldn’t miss much if he just disappeared for a week or so. 

Enough of that depressing life crap.

Meulin skids into the kitchen and helps Dave peel potatoes. 

Dirk slaps a hand on his shoulder.

The next day after work, Dave goes out to train again. He never knows what he’s training for, but he does it anyway. Zombie apocalypse? Sure. Alien invasion? Likely. Government crackdown on secret agent Strider? Fucking Imminent. 

It’s hot out today, and he wipes the sweat off of his brow with his previously discarded T-shirt. He opted for shorts, so his legs are itchy from walking through the taller parts of grass to get to his favorite clearing. It’s sunny, but he’s got plenty of SPF 50 and a canteen that could feed the thirst of a high school of teenage boys. Nice one. Gotta use that line in conversation. A little weak, but it’s got a ring to it. 

The grackle that likes to hang out on Dave’s open windowsill, the one he tagged and trained, hops sideways on its branch. Dave’s grackle. The grackle that essentially belongs to Dave. The grackle for Dave. That one. It squawks at him, and recites a section of a beat Dave had playing earlier in the day, with some mixed in metal sounds. Fucking creepy intelligent birds.

Dave taps his sword at it, and then ends by giving it a little rap to consider. The bird turns its head and raps back, a line it’s heard from Dirk before. God Striders are lame. 

Obviously the narrator must send out a distress signal for a lack of plotworthy things to add here, because a Dave then notices a figure just off the beaten path, staring at him. The look is kind of… a mix of dumbfounded and unimpressed. 

The sword is thrust into the dummy, and Dave considers the newcomer. Oh, he recognizes Dave alright. And Dave recognizes him, but doesn’t really want to get into it. 

“Can I help you?” Dave asks, picking up his water to take a swig.

“Are you fucking rapping at a bird, Strider?”

“…yes. Vantas.”

“Are you fucking swordfighting in the woods, Strider?”

“Yep.” He pops the ‘p’.

“For fun?”

“No, for the sheer entertainment value of millions of fans.” Dave gestures around him, cocks his hip and takes another swig of the water. He adjusts the training dummy. He’ll need a new one soon, probably.

When he looks back up, the dude’s not just staring but is flushed red, as well. And it’s not from a sudden wave of heat. Interesting. A blond eyebrow is raised. 

“Ya good, or should I take a picture for your records. It’ll last longer. You wanna draw me like a French girl or some shit?”

Vantas turns even redder, and stomps off into the trees. Good riddance, man. 

He used to go to school with Dave. High school. Name: Karkat Vantas. Subject: Math and English. And the art of having a seriously nice ass. Weird guy. He’d been better friends with John and Terezi anyway, so Dave barely spent much time with him. Didn’t even notice him there half the time. 

Okay so Dave is really fibbing a lot. Thanks, archetypes, for the commonality in themes of denial of feelings. He’s fibbing a fucking lot. Pants on fire, that one. He’d had the hugest teen crush on Vantas in high school. Practically in love with him because he saw the guy practicing his harp ONE TIME and like, went down hard. 

Now, at the time Dave had been shoved so far down into the closet, he was practically at the lamppost in Narnia, talking to a decently attractive faun if you’re into that kind of thing. So let’s not talk about that. The part about Vantas being better friends with John and Rez was true, though. Karkat had dated Terezi before she decided to leave him for Dave (ouch) who, after a couple weeks, admitted his HOMONESS. She didn’t blame him. Karkat was apparently high maintenance according to Terezi. Who is Dave to judge. 

There WERE some choice jokes made about her not just having a bad gaydar, but being _blind_ to his gayness overall. Terezi punched him. He deserved it. 

ANYWAYS.

After Karkat disappears back into the trees, Dave sees the crow lingering. 

He gets the sudden and inescapable urge to sing at it like a Disney fucking movie feature. 

“Fuck that shit.”

The black bird squawks indignantly. 

“And fuck you, too, Lady.”

Dave yanks his sword from the dummy and goes home. 

 

\--------

 

“Tell me, Cronus, who is the fairest one of all?”

“Do I really hafta do this, ma’am?”

“Just answer the fucking question!”

“Well okays. So I mean ya obviously the prettiest one in dis room, right?”

“Thank you, Cronus.”

“So that answers that question, Your Imperious Condescension.”

She sighs and relaxes into her chair. 

“Tho…”

She tenses. 

“There was dis pretty boy I seen at the vegetable stand yesterday. Might take the cake. Real androgynous, excellent cheekbones. Smooth-lined in tha face like.”

“Bring me Gamzee and Kurloz.”

“What all up and seems to be the motherFUCKIN’ problem, milady?”

 

\----

 

Dave is once again yanking his sword out of his training dummy when something large and round whistles through the air at his ear. Barely dodging in time, he’s forced to get low to the ground to avoid another blow, and finds himself immensely grateful for Dirk’s random surprise fights. When he looks up, it’s to see two tall, almost skeletal figures, with skull-patterned face paint and who the fuck? Their hair is like, fucking massive. 

One of them is flipping a… bowling pin? in the air, smiling at him. The other one is actually wearing a goddamn morph suit and purple booty shorts and Dave must have fallen and hit his head because shit couldn’t get much weirder. Did he eat pizza before he went to bed or something?

The one in the morph suit has a couple of police batons, and those are at least a little more normal and expected. His mouth is also sewn shut, and really who the fuck wrote these guys into existence in the first place? A complete asshole, probably. Proven only by the fact that there’s no hesitation before they both attack again. 

Dave slides over on the ground, picks up his (thankfully closed) backpack, and rolls to his feet. Two versus one are never good odds. So he runs. They pursue. They’re faster than him, and he fends them off well enough, leaping off of trees like he trains for, deflecting their blows and getting short leads by leaping easily across logs. 

They chase him like snakes, jabbing and feinting, and hissing. Wild hair somehow not getting caught on any branches, and long limbs almost blending in with the trees. 

And of course, with his luck, Dave is cornered. He puts his arms up in front of his face as the two men tower over him. No blow comes. 

“She sent us to kill you, brother,” one of them says. 

Dave lowers one hand, so that he can see them. 

“Her Imperiousness Betty fuckin’ Crocker sent us to kill you and get your little rad heart for her.”

“What? Why?”

“We don’t ask the motherfuckin’ questions, bro, we just get paid, Kurloz and I,” he replies, and stills. Before meeting Dave’s eyes directly, and then moving aside. Just enough. An opening, however purposeful. Dave shoots through it, holding up his sword as a guard, and sprints away into the trees. 

“Run as far as you can, brother,” the one that spoke to him calls. “Don’t look back.”

Dave does just that. Crashing through the branches, seeing matted huge hair and skeletal grins everywhere he looks. Eyes glowing from the underbrush, branches tearing at his clothes, crows (not his own) calling at him from the trees like they’re expecting him to die. A cloud of gnats hits him in the face, and he falls into deep mud. It gets into his clothes, his nails, his nose.

Choking, Dave doesn’t hear the growl until it’s too late, and he looks up to find half of a wolf pack staring him down. He runs again, and they chase him. One manages to get at his leg as they chase him away from their den, and he knows he’s bleeding with the warmth seeping into his sock. They stop pursuit when he falls into a river. 

Somehow Dave manages to find a root to pull himself out, and battles the current to grip it and climb out of the rushing water. He makes it onto the bank, and tries to stand. He cannot. Everything goes black. 

\----

Waking up to an unfamiliar ceiling is really not what Dave was dreaming. Well, it’s not too far off, but there are much less naked men with (for some reason) clown face paint. The light flickering on the aforementioned ceiling indicates… a candle? Dave’s fingers flex, and touch a heavy, handmade stitch. A quilt? Yeah. 

Something smells really good, like stew. Time to categorize. For shits and gigs. Quilt, good smell, candlelight, leg pain, shoulder pain, head pain, whispers near the side of the bed, can flex toes and fingers - wait what? Whispers?

Dave shoots up and instantly regrets it. Partly because it gets rid of the quilt keeping his bare chest warm, and partly because of the massive amount of vertigo he gets from becoming upright. His hand finds his head, and there’s a bandage there. Haphazardly done. He turns the corner of the blanket up and finds that he’s still wearing his undershorts, thank God, but there’s a bandage on his leg. His other arm is in a sling and he wonders if he dislocated his shoulder. 

How even did he get here? He remembers… skeleton dudes, clubs, training, running… and baked goods? What? Oh fuck. Betty Crocker. Dirk’s fucking boss has a hit out on him? 

Christ. 

It’s like a crack AU come to life. 

The whispers happen again. Oh right. He was trying to investigate that. He scans the room for things, sees several beds of varying sizes, and his sword and pack on the floor near the one he’s laying in. Okay, so they gave him his stuff. He can defend himself. That means it’s probably safe here. 

Rustling cloth draws his eyes to the end of the bed, and he leans over to look. A small, jet-black hand is gripping the edge of the blankets. It’s trembling, and attached to a similarly trembling, small, jet-black humanoid. And that’s what he’s calling it. 

“Uh… yo?”

The thing flinches, and looks up at him. Small eyes, human-looking for the shape part, but instead of an iris and pupil, it’s just all black and vaguely glistening. 

Time to meet Dave’s new roommates. Whatever the fuck they are. 

The little dude Dave saw is now sitting on the bed in front of him, between his knees. The thing is clutching a small blackboard in one hand, and a pack of multicolored Crayola chalk in the other. It’s an improvement from constantly wringing his little hands in his gray, uh… tunic. 

It writes on the chalkboard after carefully selecting a stick of tan chalk. 

“I am the Mayor. I am a male I think, according to human customs. It’s nice to meet you.”

This whole shebang just went from dodgy to impossibly adorable. 

Christ, is it an alien or something?

It holds out its hand for Dave to shake, so he does. And two giant fucking lizards walk out from behind the end of the bed, climb up, and sit on their hind legs next to the Mayor. Okay. Giant red and yellow lizards. One of them is making more spit-bubbles than a baby with too much saliva.

The Mayor writes, “This is Casey and Nakko.”

Holy shit. John’s dream come true. A giant yellow lizard thing named Casey. 

A figure just barely taller than the mayor climbs up next while Dave’s distracted by patting the red lizard’s snout. It’s also black as the void, and covered in what looks like caution tape. It looks a little shifty and dodgy, suspicious. It growls at Dave. The Mayor writes “renegade” on the chalkboard, and points. It has a lot of teeth. Dave backs away an inch.

Another, taller, humanoid figure, this one white as the moon, comes out from behind the closet door, and sits right next to Dave. The Mayor writes out “Peregrine” and gestures toward the pastel-wearing thing. It removes its jaunty little knit cap before shaking Dave’s proffered hand. It’s uh… sweet. The cap is replaced. These things apparently don’t have hair. 

A tall figure steps out from behind the half-open bedroom door, but does not come closer like the others have. The Mayor gestures eagerly for her (Dave sees a vaguely breasts-shaped lump in her dress) to come closer, she shakes her head a little. She is wearing a rag dress like the dark ones, but has her hood down. Her face is bright white like peregrine, but elfin in her features and with dark, opalescent eyes. She seems somehow old, and powerful. Dave doesn’t look at her eyes for long. He can’t. It Hurts.

A tiny hand is waving in his field of vision, and he glances back to the Mayor. He has written “Windswept” on the board. And, after looking at her as if for permission, he then writes “queen.”

The hell?

The Mayor senses his confusion, and tilts his head as if thinking before erasing everything on the slate. He puts away the tan chalk carefully, and removes a green piece. 

“We are consorts, hiding here to keep queen safe.” He gestures at himself and ‘renegade.’ “We are rebels from the Dark Ones. We protect Queen Windswept and her handmaiden. You are not consort, but you are hiding. Queen says.”

Okay, seriously, what the hell? 

Politics, fantasy creatures? Is this a teen novel? Holy shit, dude, why would you bring in this extra plot? 

Story padding? Yeah, whatever. 

Dave just deals with it. He looks at ‘Windswept’ and she narrows her eyes at him. 

“Yes. I’m hiding,” Dave says, clearly. Honesty is working so far. The Mayor seems satisfied, and reaches out to slap a hand to Dave’s shoulder a few times, as if trying to pat it. Okay.

There’re some footsteps in the hall, and a short, plump woman steps into the room. She curtsies to the queen. Same weirdly all-white skin as the tall one, same opalescent eyes. But she seems much more comforting. Older than the other six creatures here, but like it’s her job to care for them. 

She opens her mouth and Dave barely sees the Mayor write “Ms Paint!” on the board before the universe is splitting with the sound of her voice. Atoms reforming, incomprehensible colors and flowers dying. Dave whites out, and when he comes to, the Mayor is waving wildly at Ms Paint, and tapping the chalk angrily on the board. She covers her face with one hand, looking guilty and embarrassed. 

Almost like she shouldn’t talk around Dave. Like he won’t be able to understand her, obviously. The Mayor pats Dave’s arm to get his attention, and Ms Paint shuffles out of the room, skirts ruffling in the breeze she makes. Does she even have feet? 

The Mayor writes “She is the housekeeper. She has made food! Safe for humans food.”

Whatever these things are, Dave is suddenly starving. He almost died today. When Ms Paint comes back in with an earthenware bowl of something steaming and a couple of pieces of what looks like fresh bread, Dave wolfs it down. 

And whaddya know. He doesn’t die. 

Dave stays with the band of uh… people. For a few days. 

Mostly he spends time with the Mayor, who is one of the only ones of the seven that know how to write in English. None of them speak with their mouths again, and for that he’s glad. There’s something familiar in the idea of a lost, injured human living in the forest with a bunch of tiny dudes. He just kind of… chooses to ignore their political struggle. Not gonna get involved and end up dying like some kid in one of Meulin’s urban fantasy novels. 

Dave’s grackle friend ends up finding him on the first day he’s there. Dave wakes up to see the bird sitting on the windowsill. The thing pretty much sticks to his shoulder while he walks around and helps the Mayor with his little collection of miniature rock ‘buildings’ on the nearby lakebed. It must be what he’s the mayor of, and Dave will, if anything, help him uphold his mayorship. 

He can’t do much else, if he’s honest with himself. Yeah his injuries are healing oddly fast, but his leg got torn up pretty good and his arm still aches when he rotates it. Ms. Paint refuses to let him help with housework, Renegade prefers doing whatever he does alone, Peregrine sticks to Windswept for the most part, and Windswept spends a lot of time doing God knows what for hours in the woods. Again, ignoring that all unless they decide to actively involve him. 

Who the fuck knows what the two giant lizards do. They seem sentient enough. Dave thinks he caught them reading, once, with little cloaks on. When he looked at them a second time, they were sitting and flapping their mouths, dumbly. Well, not dumbly. Entirely. Casey likes making glubbing noises, and the red lizard somehow makes a noise that sounds like some nerd saying “nak” over and over again, fast. 

…

Dave puts a leaf on top of the new municipal court building. 

The Mayor had introduced himself to the grackle as the “official court architect,” entirely seriously, and after that Dave makes sure to always follow instructions despite the Mayor’s acceptance of any and all contributions. The Mayor seems very determined to get proportions correct. That worries Dave when he thinks about it. Are these… actual plans?

Dave starts to get the feeling at some point that he’s the only one in this group that really needs sleep. The other beds seem used, but he never sees any of the “consorts” asleep. The Mayor tucks him in at night, and then goes and does whatever the fuck. The third night, he pulls a jar of fireflies out from under his bed before he leaves, waves at Dave, and ollies outie.

The fireflies do not make a reappearance. 

The Mayor and Peregrine have clothes for Dave when he wakes up on the fourth morning, and most of them are clothes made for women but it’s not like he expected them to know what humans wear nowadays. And the girl jeans look really good on his ass. And the skirts are comfortable. _Whatever. It feels like a fucking fairytale anyway, so I might as well be wearing long billowy skirts. I draw the fucking line at woodland creatures, though._

Dave gets a bright idea after remembering that the modern world still exists outside of the quaint house in the woods, though. His phone ran out of battery on the first day, but he needs to get a message to Dirk. 

He sends one with the bird. 

The thing spits beats at him as he ties the message to its leg, and he tells it to go to Dirk. It flies away. He hopes it understood him. The message tells Dirk that he’ll be back in a few days and he’s doing a recreation of the Blair Witch Project, but not to tell anyone.

The bird comes back a few hours later with a tiny temporary tattoo of a smuppet tied to its foot. Cool. 

\----

“Tell me, Cronus. Who is the fairest of them all.”

“You, ma’am.”

“That’s better.”

“Or… at least you would be, if’n the boys had managed to take the kid out.”

“WHAT?!”

\----

Her Imperious Condescension storms down into the basement of the mansion, her manservant following closely behind. There’s an invisible door in the wall that she punches open, and Cronus flinches behind her. The both of them enter a dark room, lit only by the sallow candlelight from handmade blood candles and the purest wax. A large sigil on the floor indicates a summoning room, and there is a plate in the center onto which the Condesce drops a long lock of her own black hair. 

Cronus hands her a cup that contains some blood and exactly seven chicken hearts. It’s poured onto the plate as well, and she reads a few lines from a book she’s practically memorized before the room is suddenly filled with what feels like black smoke but looks like the ooze of the void. 

“What do you want?” A voice booms. Cronus clutches his ears, but the Condesce remains stock still. Angry. 

“How do I succeed? How do I become the fairest in the land?”

The smoke dissipates, and a figure is standing on the symbol on the floor. Its arms are crossed and it looks a little put-out. It’s tall, jet-skinned, and wearing… a green trenchcoat. Snowman, it has called itself. Its voice is feminine when it speaks again, and its eyes are closed, lazy. 

“Only if you kill the boy can you be the fairest,” Snowman drawls, as if it’s information she has said hundreds of times. 

“How? Tell me?” The Condesce asks. She didn’t summon a dark god for nothing. 

Snowman produces a bushel of apples, from nowhere. The most delicious bright red. No worm holes or bruises, perfect. The god opens its eyes. They are infinite space, pearls, the lack of existence after death. She is the dark queen, and she answered this call on purpose. This will be her move to make to finally kill of the white queen and take her place forever. 

“Take this,” she directs. “Take these to him, have him eat, and he will not wake. Unless he receives his true love’s kiss. You must lie in wait for the love, and kill this human as well.” 

“The fuck? True love???”

“Hey, lady, I don’t make the goddamn rules. Love is strong.”

“Fine.”

“Remember though, Bethany.”

“What now?”

“If this fails, and the boy is awoken, I will lose the war against the daylight.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She turns to leave the room, apples in hand. 

Once she reaches the door, however, she can go no further. Snowman waits there for her, and grips the collar of her shirt. “If this happens you will lose all of your power.”

“Fine, yeah, I get it!”

“You will not be able to run,” the dark queen continues, voice like thunder and lightning and the formation of planets into black holes. “I will wrench your soul from you and you will be mine for eternity. This is the kind of magic you use.”

“Yeah, okay! Geez. Not gonna fail!”

Snowman searches her eyes, soul, heart and mind, and finds only confidence. She nods, once. 

“You had better, mortal.”

\----

That evening, Dave is sitting alone on the porch, whittling a little figurehead into his cane. A woman approaches him. An old, witchy woman. With a huge honkin’ nose. And the grossest eyebrows ever. And a limp and a gnarled cane. Weird. 

“Would you like some apples?” She asks, something knowing in her little old eyes. 

Now, Dave considers himself a wise man. 

So he knows it’s probably a trap. 

“Fuck no,” he says. 

She looks a little frustrated when Dave goes back to his whittling. 

“I insist. I live in these woods, as well. Found an old apple tree, and thought I might share the spoils.”

“Alright old lady,” Dave begins, and the woman bristles. “Now, I’m pretty sure there’s something wrong with them apples. How about them apples is a bit of an overrated statement, but lookit me, I made it anyway.” 

He chips a little off the wolf head he’s making. 

“And if my memory serves, there was this movie released in the forties that highlighted the danger of taking uh… fruit from strangers. She like, died or something. And I know my skirt is pretty but if I take one of those apples we’ll be playing Russian roulette with only me as a competitor. How do you like my odds?” 

The woman gets more and more stiff the more he talks, and he can see it even out of the corner of his eye. 

But! 

She still manages to relax. And smiles. And puts the basket down next to Dave. 

Fuck.

She waves, says something about Dave keeping them anyway in case he changes his mind, and wanders off. 

Another thing about Dave, is that he can’t resist apples. And these apples look okay. They look excellent, in fact. Something about them is almost magnetizing his hand. The hand that is currently picking one up and raising it to his mouth. And holding it while he bites in. Might as well, right? They look so… good. So good. 

Dave doesn’t feel so great before everything gets fuzzy, and then he blacks out, for the third time in four days. 

\----

Why is Karkat hiking on a mountain, you might ask. And Karkat isn’t sure of the answer… probably. One of the bohemian assholes at his university told him to go hiking once upon a time. Said something about finding himself out in the woods, having so much time to think and depart from the “smog and tension of civilization.” Whatever. For Karkat, it’s more about not having to spend these few days without the presence of his awful roommate Sollux and his incredibly annoying and loud boyfriend, who is also coincidentally visiting for those few days, and burns everything he cooks. 

Okay, so maybe he knows at least part of why he’s out here. He sure as hell isn’t spending four or more days of his break in close quarters with Sollux’s theater-nerd boyfriend and their loud copulation practices. Karkat saw Eridan at the door with a suitcase, put all his camping gear in his backpack with several novels and some rations and a water filter. 

Now, Karkat still isn’t usually the type to hike, or do much of anything outdoors. The thing about him, though, or so he thinks, is that he has an insatiable need to be the BEST. And he utterly failed that at college so far. Firstly by deciding to go with his passion and write literature. Secondly by going with a creative writing degree, of all things. Thirdly by sticking with it for more than two years. But By Fucking God if he’s not going to finish what he started. 

Nothing against creative writing majors. Karkat’s almost certain. Nothing against them at all. It’s probably all self-hatred. And the fact that he can’t write for shit, but he does it anyway. Hey, E.L. James got a book published, right?

He’s working on it, goddammit.

ANYWAYS. 

Karkat’s just hiking. He’s been on his camping trip for a few days, now, and things keep getting weirder. 

First day, he saw… Strider in the woods, flexing and slashing and… shit, boy. He wasn’t just sweating because of the goddamn heat. There had to be something supernatural at work in the rippling biceps of his high school crush. It was like one of the novels that Karkat had strapped inside his backpack, without the long hair and the swooning wench. 

He handled that entire encounter very smoothly, he thinks. Very.

Second day, he didn’t see Strider at all. He did see two tall figures dressed all in black, heading out of the mountain by his estimation. The taller one had twigs in his hair. The shorter one had flowers. Both were carrying what looked like weapons. Karkat left, hoping they wouldn’t notice him.

On the Third day, things got magical. He had finished most of his rations, or so he thought. And when he got back from getting water from the river he’d been lazily following, he found that he’d used less than half. That evening, when he opened his pack again, it was as if he hadn’t eaten any at all. Just before bed, he found a large leaf with some berries, and a can of tab, waiting on a log next to the small fire he’d made to cook his beans on. 

He drank the tab. It didn’t kill him. Minor success. 

The fourth day is turning out to be something special. 

He wakes up at sunrise to a cloud of fireflies in his tent. The word “serenity” is written out in the mud in front of the flap. Holy shit. 

The fire has been meticulously rearranged, and the ashes are black, instead of white. There is a pile of dead flowers on top of the cold pieces of wood. Black-eyed Susans. Do those flowers even grow naturally in this area? Karkat packs up as quickly as he can, and gets out of the clearing. 

All day he hears whispering, as if coming from both the branches and the soil where he steps. The forest is darker here, and he has half a mind to go home right away, because he’s probably going crazy out here in the woods. He sees a patch of oily black, glowing mushrooms next to a lake.

It’s the star lake, he knows. He’s heard about it, there’s even a brochure on it in the cryptid section of the library back home. The surface is clear and flat, reflecting the clouds above and the blue sky. He looks back toward the forest, and sees it dark as night. He looks at the lake, and it’s obviously bright as day. Christ. What the fuck? 

Across the lake, Karkat thinks he sees a figure dressed in a long red skirt hunched over in the sand. It’s hard to make out, but the figure is standing next to a smaller figure, and spinning it in a circle. Karkat blinks and they’re gone. 

“Oh fuck no, I’m done. Gone. Goodbye!” Karkat throws his hands up in the air, and trudges back into the woods. He stuffs his headphones in his ears, and walks steadfastly toward where his compass reads due south, the direction that town was in. Fuck Sollux, he and Eridan could get a hotel if the asshat was still there. Karkat walks for about an hour around the other edge of the lake, searching for the river.

And he stops. 

A scream is echoing all around him. He whips out his headphones, throws them to the ground, and the sound seems to stop. What the fuck did Sollux do to his ipod? 

And the scream is echoing again, this time, swishing through the leaves and creeping through the dirt and it’s painful how much it’s tugging on his heart. A jagged step is taken toward the lake bed, and he’s consumed with sunlight for a minute or two before the screaming stops. He tries to step away from the tugging on his heart, and the screaming starts again. 

“Okay, fuck you! I want to go home!”

Another scream. He takes a step in the proffered direction. It stops. 

“FUCK YOU!” He yells again, even as he follows this unfamiliar lean in his feet, and hikes into the brush. 

Miraculously enough, there’s a path to follow in about five minutes of walking through bad terrain. The path looks too natural to be man-made, but it seems impossible that nature would have any hand in such a clean space to travel through the trees. 

After an hour, Karkat tries to stop to take a break. The screaming starts again wailing in his ear canals, and he just forces himself to drink water and munch on the go. Luckily, walking seems like a good enough pace for whatever entity is forcing him along this path. He’s not stupid enough to ignore it. Or maybe he’s too stupid to ignore it. Haha. 

Two hours later, and Karkat is crashing out through the edge of the trees. A vine catches him on the way out, and he spends a good five minutes detangling himself before he notices a tall creature with cloud-white skin staring at him. There is a cottage behind the creature, and the door is wide open as a group of small…. People? Pull out a long table. A couple of fucking huge lizards have armfuls of flowers that they’re carrying to lay on a pile on the ground. 

More Black-eyed Susans. 

O…kay?

There’s something on the ground just behind the figure that’s currently in front of him, staring him down, and Karkat cranes his neck around to see it. 

And HOLY SHIT that’s a body. 

Oh god.

Oh god god oh god oh god.

That’s Strider’s boot oh god.

All of the smaller figures look up at the same time. 

Karkat feels the world shift, about four inches to the left. The atmosphere splits. Out of the corner of his eye he catches something, and whips his head around to see some kind of old woman with a huge fucking affinity for the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz, move just barely behind a tree. Is Karkat the only one who sees her?

The tall figure blocks Karkat’s view. She touches his arm, and everything goes back to normal. Beneath her hood is skin like starlight and eyes like the cosmos. He feels like his skin is being peeled back, without the pain. His eyes widen with hers, as she most likely does something really fucking cliché like examine his soul. 

This is officially getting too weird. If the disembodied screaming hadn’t been weird enough. 

The witch lady moves in the corner of his eye. He stares at her, now that he can. 

“Hey you. What’s going on? What the fuck are these things? You look sorta normal, I guess.”

She flees.

Ah Shit. 

The humanoid thing in front of him touches his shoulder again, and a voice echoes in his head.

_You must, because I cannot. Save the boy._

It’s a female voice. Good and grand. It sounds like the screaming he heard earlier. Also… good and grand. Karkat looks at the uh… body on the ground, at the shoe that’s just slightly sticking out, and the imprint the face is leaving on the underside of the sheet covering it. He looks back up at the humainoid, and she looks fierce and determined and powerful.

“Alright, fine, lady,” he spits at her, getting the feeling that not chasing the old witch will prompt more screaming. So he drops his heavy pack on the ground, and runs after the crone. 

She runs up the mountain, obviously just trying to get away. Her little old lady legs are carrying her alarmingly fast, and Karkat doesn’t think this could get any weirder. And then a turn of her head shows the corporate heiress, Betty Crocker the third, for just a flash of a second. 

God.

What?

_Excuse me? Betty Crocker the third?_

Before Karkat can think too hard about it, though, he’s cornering her on a cliff. She backs up to the edge, hands behind her as if to find purchase on an invisible wall. The old woman is looking at him with very real fear and apprehension. 

“Why did you run?” Karkat asks. Something flashes in her eyes. 

“Why did you pursue?!” She retorts. 

“Okay, that didn’t answer my question, but I’ll take it I guess.”

She snarls, spit flying. Gross.

“I must be the fairest of all the land!!” She yells at Karkat. She's holding up a very sharp knife toward him.

“What?”

And in the most shitty and anticlimactic way possible, she trips on a root. And falls down behind her, off the cliff. Karkat runs forward, as if to save her, but when she tries to grip the side to keep from plummeting, the tree whose root she tripped over falls as well. In a very Mufasa-and-Scar way, she screams as she descends, and Karkat watches with horror. 

The crack when she hits the bottom of the cliff is… shaking. 

The tree pulls down the nearby shelf of rock, and it crumbles upon her. If she wasn’t dead before, she is now. Karkat vomits into a bush on the edge of the woods. 

A split second of hysteria hits Karkat, and he thinks blissfully about writing some metaphor connected to this situation, and how a story surrounding a character’s imminent shift into a cold-blooded killer would make him into a best-selling author. Then he remembers that he isn’t white enough for that to work. 

Remembering Strider’s shoe, and how the voice had said he would save him, Karkat shakily assumes the standing position. He tries to go as fast as possible back to that little cottage. Something’s pulling him there, so it’s not hard to direct himself, and he doesn’t have to remember how he even got to where he is. The time it takes to go around a ravine, though, makes his skin crawl. 

By the time he gets back, the body has been placed on the beautifully carved table, outside for some reason. The humanoid things around him are laying a huge amount of flowers on his body, like they don’t know what else to put on him. It’s actually Strider, Karkat can see that now. The bright red prom dress laid across his toned body definitely confirms it. Toned… is it weird to call a corpse toned?

Probably. 

It’s true, though.

The smallest one of the figures is patting his chest with one tiny black hand, as if that would wake him up. The figure is wearing a small sash with an old Kraft Mayo label on it. Weird. But okay. Sorta. 

_Kiss him._

The voice makes Karkat leap ten miles out of his skin, and he definitely does not screech a little. Not even a bit.

“What the fuck?!”

With horror he notices the tallest white figure standing to his left. She’s looking at him with her hood off, now, and he can see that she has a bald sphere head. To be expected. 

_Kiss him._

“Why would I do that?!”

Her nebula eyes are boring into his soul, most likely. 

“Holy god.”

 _This is how you save him._

“Holy Necrophilia, Batman. No, I’m leaving. Goodbye. This is getting too weird.” 

Now Karat notices that Strider is snoring like a freighter. 

“Him not being dead isn’t getting you anywhere.”

_Kiss him_

“No.”

_You fool_

“Yeah right lady.”

_WE ARE SO CLOSE TO WINNING THIS WAR._

“Not my war to win”

She seems to think for a minute. 

_He will die._

Ugggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. What. What the fuck. 

“Are you serious?”

_Why would I lie to a human about this?_

“Yeah… I guess you’re right.”

_You are his true love._

CUE RECORD SCRATCHING SOUND

“Excuse me???”

_What is it now._

“You want me to kiss him, sure, he’s attractive enough but true love? That shit doesn’t exist! I’ll carry the loser out if I have to and get him to a goddamn hospital. I’ve seen some crazy shit today but that doesn’t mean I suddenly believe in TRUE fucking LOVE.”

_I understand modern humans have a hard time with this concept._

“Well YEAH! Even if this true love bullshit is real, I get stuck with some asshole who’s just snoozing in a red dress in the middle of the fucking woods? No. I’m DONE.”

_Calm down._

“No! I will not calm down! I just caused the death of some old woman who was probably just I DUNNO out here picking BERRIES, and now you want me to KISS the guy who STOLE MY GIRLFRIEND in HIGH SCHOOL.”

_Just do it, Knight._

“No!” the smallest black humanoid looks a little distressed now, and comes over to tug on Karkat’s sleeve. 

_I guess you’re not up for the job, then?_

“WHAT?! I’m totally up for it, this is just stupid! Stupid stupid!”

Karkat storms away anyway. He’s probably fifty yards away from the cottage when he pauses. 

True… love?

What if it does exist?

What if this asshole from high school really was his, too?

Karkat turns back.

The tallest one doesn’t look surprised when he reenters the clearing, and the others all rush to the door and pull Karkat toward the table. 

The asshole is drowning in flowers now, and Karkat leans down and gets pollen eight ways from Sunday right up his nose.

And he kisses him.

Nothing happens at first. And then he notices the guy’s left eye is just barely cracked open, and his lips are barely puckering in a way that’s just not relaxed enough for sleep

“You piece of shit.”

Karkat punches him.

Strider yelps, and then groans long and hard, clutching his face with both hands, curled in on himself.

“You would punch a sleeping princess?”

“Don’t call yourself princess. And you weren’t sleeping.”

“Well… you’re not even a bad kisser!”

“Is that supposed to be an insult?”

“I don’t know dude.”

The small people-things are cheering a bit, the one with the Mayo sash is clapping enthusiastically, and you feel like you’re missing something. But Strider, with blood on his face, and no stupid sunglasses… it’s too hard to resist. Somewhere in the back of Karkat’s head, he can feel the voice explaining something incredibly stupid and complicated about a war and finally defeating the dark queen’s pawn, blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH. 

Karkat’s too busy yanking Strider in by the collar of his shirt and hissing a couple of choice insults into his mouth. And Strider’s probably getting the same talk from the female voice, but he’s also too busy, putting his arms around Karkat’s neck and swallowing his words.

Eventually the Queen gives up. She leaves the boys knocked out in a clearing on the side of the mountain close to town, and tells herself she won’t think of them too much in the future. Humans are useless. 

Cute, but useless.

**THE END!**

**Author's Note:**

> hey so! some comments on my B&B AU inspired me to write this and have some fun! Comments from sburbanite and Errorcode254! The part with the russian roulette I'll attribute to Errorcode 254, and the rapping/beatboxing at crows I got from Sburbanite (title was also derived from something they said btw, seemed simple and I was leaning that way anyways)! Man, those two are miles better at writing Dave than me and that's just in the comments on another fic! haha. 
> 
> Go see the comments on my fic "For Who Could Ever Love a Beast" to see the full thread, it's a trip to read!
> 
> Snow White has less plot elements than Beauty and the Beast, so this one was done as a lil oneshot! I hope y'all like it, and have a wonderful Valentine's day! Now time to get back to my History essay :PPPP
> 
> _________________________________________________________________________
> 
> [Here](http://royalrastafariannaynays.tumblr.com/) is a link to my blog if you want to see updates or talk to me about my fics!


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